Hello all! I recently discovered this site, and I find it very interesting. I wanted to make people aware that I have also published a book called A Miracle on Trial, which debunks the supposed "Mathematical Miracle of the Quran." It is the most thorough review of this supposed miracle that I know of - and I thought it would be fitting on this site / forum. The links are below (although it is available in other formats, as well):

MattS wrote:Hello all! I recently discovered this site, and I find it very interesting. I wanted to make people aware that I have also published a book called A Miracle on Trial, which debunks the supposed "Mathematical Miracle of the Quran." It is the most thorough review of this supposed miracle that I know of - and I thought it would be fitting on this site / forum. The links are below (although it is available in other formats, as well):

Hello MattS. I'm sure that your book would be interesting to many here, but there are so many books and so little time... Do you perhaps have a brief outline of your argument to whet our appetites, please?

‘Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

MattS wrote:Hello all! I recently discovered this site, and I find it very interesting. I wanted to make people aware that I have also published a book called A Miracle on Trial, which debunks the supposed "Mathematical Miracle of the Quran." It is the most thorough review of this supposed miracle that I know of - and I thought it would be fitting on this site / forum. The links are below (although it is available in other formats, as well):

Hello MattS. I'm sure that your book would be interesting to many here, but there are so many books and so little time... Do you perhaps have a brief outline of your argument to whet our appetites, please?

Yes, I can definitely give a brief synopsis. My intention is not to make money off of my book, but instead to educate people - so I will pretty much outline everything. (This is a similar outline to what I've given to other sites, as well):

Intro

There are a growing number of Muslims who believe that there is an intricate mathematical code embedded in the Quran that constitutes a miracle. They say that the entire book is mathematically composed in such a way that it would be impossible for a human to imitate it, and that this is proof that it was authored by God - but is this true? I examine the claims made in my book, A Miracle on Trial: A Critical Analysis of the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran. In it I tried to be as unbiased as possible and use only the most rigorous methods of analysis available.

The Numbers

Math is a scary topic for most people. There are many reasons for this, but mostly it is because it is misunderstood and complex. Statistics are even scarier for some, but they are at least easily understood: If I say there is a 10% chance of rain or a 35% chance of winning, people know exactly what I mean – but when the calculations behind such statements are manipulative or mistaken, the vast majority of people are unable to tell. Therefore, the statement “the numbers don’t lie” is not always true.

The Miracle is based around the prime number 19, and multiples thereof. Essentially, it is claimed that throughout the Quran, there are so many multiples of 19 that this number is divinely coded within the scripture. For example, there are 114 chapters within the Quran, and 114 = 19x6. Also, there are 6,346 verses in the Quran, or 19x334. There are also facts that take multiple variables into account, such as this one:

“Verse 2:55 is one where people are demanding ‘physical evidence’ from God that this is His scripture, which is the Mathematical Miracle; 2 + 55 = 57 (19x3), and this verse is the exact 19th occurrence of the word ‘God’ in the entire Quran.”

Then, there are the “mysterious initials” within the Quran. These are letters such as “A.L.R.,” which start out 29 of the 114 chapters of the book. They are seemingly random, and have no known explanation as to their existence. With that said, the Quran seems to claim that they prove the divine authorship of the book, as showcased is one of the mysterious verses below:

Quran, 12:1: "A.L.R. These (letters) are proofs of this profound scripture."

Rashad Khalifa, the man who discovered the Mathematical Miracle, claimed that if you counted up the frequencies of each of these letters in their respective chapters, they always resulted in multiples of 19. As there are 14 sets of initials on 29 chapters it would be quite a coincidence, and in fact a near impossibility, for this to have occurred by chance. These initials along with the other facts (such as the ones listed previously) combine with some verses in the Quran referencing the number 19, and allegedly prove that the scripture is from God as no human could have authored such an intricate code in the Dark Ages.

To actually figure out how significant this entire phenomenon was, I had to set out to compile an exhaustive list of every fact put forth by Rashad Khalifa, and verify them by hand, which I did (including counting all of the letters in the Arabic Quran). Then, I took on analyzing each one of them.

The Facts

The vast majority of these facts are true, admittedly. However, what is not true is their significance: There are so many numbers to pull from, that we can make just about anything a multiple of 19. After reviewing all of the claims, and verifying each by hand, a few things became clear: First of all, almost everything claimed was just simple insignificant numerology. Secondly, some of the facts were either deliberately faked, or outright wrong.

Next, the Quran has within its text a challenge to those who disbelieve in it to produce ten chapters like those found in the Quran to prove that a human being can make them. Supposedly, as only God could author the Quran, this challenge is impossible to complete. According to those that believe in the Mathematical Miracle, this is a challenge issued by God saying “no one can ever replicate the intricate mathematics that I have interlaced into the Quran.” In my book, I have a chapter dedicated to a fake holy text that I wrote. It is ten chapters long, and within it are 361 (19x19) verses. It is a completely coherent text, with religious laws and duties spelled out (all made up of course), written in verse (just like the Quran), and has 282 multiples of 19 within it that imitate the ones found in the Quran both in form and content. To put this into perspective, my book has 361 verses and 282 facts, which means that 78% of the verses on average are specially coded. Compare this to the Quran: There are 6,346 verses, and 385 facts in total. To prove my point, I also show in my book that any text would contain such a code, especially if we allow ourselves the ability to manipulate the text. To this end, I demonstrated that we could find a code similar to the one in the Quran using the Book of Mormon without actually finding it (this is what is known in math as an “existence proof.”) This would not be difficult to find, although it might be tedious.

This is the general outline - and of course, the book goes much further in detail. If there are any questions, please feel free to ask.

Thank you to Faith Freedom for allowing me to post this. Keep up the great work!

Ah, yes, thank you. I've seen other, different, numerological claims too, although I can't recall what they were. I think they might have been mentioned in this forum**. Doing all that must have taken ages, a labour of love indeed. Love for your fellow men, that is, not for Islam!If the whole "miracle" is based on 19, one would expect 19 to be praised somewhere in the highly understandable Koran, so as to encourage people to look for it. Is this so? Maybe 19 jinn will just fit nicely onto a pin head?** a quick search shows that it has popped up quite a bit.

‘Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Fernando wrote:Ah, yes, thank you. I've seen other, different, numerological claims too, although I can't recall what they were. I think they might have been mentioned in this forum**. Doing all that must have taken ages, a labour of love indeed. Love for your fellow men, that is, not for Islam!If the whole "miracle" is based on 19, one would expect 19 to be praised somewhere in the highly understandable Koran, so as to encourage people to look for it. Is this so? Maybe 19 jinn will just fit nicely onto a pin head?** a quick search shows that it has popped up quite a bit.

I agree. There is one, single, solitary reference to the number 19 within the Quran, in an obscure place. It is in verses 74:30-31, and it reads thus (according to the translator who discovered the code):

"Over it [the Quran] is nineteen. We appointed angels to be guardians of Hell, and we assigned their number (19) (1) to disturb the disbelievers, (2) to convince the Christians and Jews (that this is a divine scripture), (3) to strengthen the faith of the faithful, (4) to remove all traces of doubt from the hearts of Christians, Jews, as well as the believers, and (5) to expose those who harbor doubt in their hearts, and the disbelievers; they will say, "What did God mean by this allegory?" God thus sends astray whomever He wills, and guides whomever He wills. None knows the soldiers of your Lord except He. This is a reminder for the people."

The traditional interpretation from Hadith is that this verse refers to the number of angels that guard and preserve the Quran from alteration - but when you combine it with the verse afterwards, it supposedly is read like "the code related to 19 is supposed to prove the authenticity of this book." The claim is that, supposedly, Muhammad (unknowingly) interlaced this code into the Quran (i.e., God did it, without telling Muhammad), and this was Muhammad's "proof" that he was a Prophet. This explains why he never produced a miracle in his lifetime, and claimed the Quran was his only miracle. Then, later (1,400 years later) Rashad Khalifa discovered this miracle, making him a "messenger beside Muhammad," so in essence they SHARED a single miracle, where Rashad proved Muhammad's authenticity by unveiling his miracle, and was also therefore made a Messenger of God by having a miracle of his own (and I swear, I tried to explain that as logically as I could - but it makes little sense). The main question that, of course, comes up is "why would God wait 1,400 years to unveil Muhammad's miracle, proving he was a true messenger?" The answer is, invariably, "because mankind wasn't sophisticated enough to understand this kind of math back in Muhammad's day - so God gave mankind the Quran, and proved its authenticity 1,400 years later." Yet, the people in those intervening years were meant to believe in Muhammad with NO proof at all... *shakes head*

Anyway, this is the only reference in the Quran to the number 19 - and it is so generalized and out of context that it really makes no sense. Beyond this, the ones who believe in the 19-code reference the many verses in the Quran where Muhammad promised a miracle was forthcoming, but never actually created one. For example, the below verses are a prophecy about when God will prove the Quran is His book, and how humans will still reject it:

"[The disbeliever] stubbornly refused to accept these proofs. I will increasingly punish him. For he reflected, then decided. Miserable is what he decided. He looked. He frowned and whined. Then he turned away arrogantly. He said, ;"This is but clever magic!'" – 74:16-24

(Supposedly this verse also destroys the idea that the code could possibly be "numerology," as calling it that just fulfills the prophecy - we are calling it "clever magic.")

Yes, it did take me quite a long time to write this book, but I wanted to investigate it for myself first - and then once I did, I wanted to publish my findings for anyone who wants to read it. If my publisher finally allows me to put this up for free (currently they do not allow $0 books), I will likely do that.

As far as the other mentions go, please feel free to refer anyone to my book - I think it is quite illuminating. (I don't think it would be proper for me to go around and post all over this forum advertising my book...)

Also, if anyone here would like a free review copy (Kindle version only), I can send out a few. Just let me know (I think my publisher allows a maximum of five free copies - so it would be a "first come, first serve" kind of basis). Just either reply to this forum, or write me at matthew.stanley0001@gmail.com .

Then, later (1,400 years later) Rashad Khalifa discovered this miracle, making him a "messenger beside Muhammad," so in essence they SHARED a single miracle, where Rashad proved Muhammad's authenticity by unveiling his miracle, and was also therefore made a Messenger of God by having a miracle of his own (and I swear, I tried to explain that as logically as I could - but it makes little sense).

It does make a lot of sense: Rashad is clearly a false prophet, since Mo was the seal of the prophets. Anyone believing Rashad to have produced - or even shared - a miracle later must be an apostate. Rashad was probably a sorcerer!More seriously, since you were able to produce similar numerology, is would not have been difficult for them in Malik's time to incorporate 19 into the Koran when they edited it, what with the resources available to an emperor. What, also, about editing of the Koran in general - once 19 had been satisfactorily incorporated, an editing would likely affect the numbers, unless it was done by someone in on the job. Also, I'm assuming that all this was done in Arabic. Since the original was in a defective script, how would subsequent dotting have affected it? Also the known variants, supposedly due to dialects - would they have affected it?

‘Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Matt,Of course Qura'n is based on sophisticated mathematical equation. It is right there in that document. The problem is, those equations are written in white letters on white paper. Only devout Muslims have the gift of reading & believing every rubbish written there.

Then, later (1,400 years later) Rashad Khalifa discovered this miracle, making him a "messenger beside Muhammad," so in essence they SHARED a single miracle, where Rashad proved Muhammad's authenticity by unveiling his miracle, and was also therefore made a Messenger of God by having a miracle of his own (and I swear, I tried to explain that as logically as I could - but it makes little sense).

It does make a lot of sense: Rashad is clearly a false prophet, since Mo was the seal of the prophets. Anyone believing Rashad to have produced - or even shared - a miracle later must be an apostate. Rashad was probably a sorcerer!More seriously, since you were able to produce similar numerology, is would not have been difficult for them in Malik's time to incorporate 19 into the Koran when they edited it, what with the resources available to an emperor. What, also, about editing of the Koran in general - once 19 had been satisfactorily incorporated, an editing would likely affect the numbers, unless it was done by someone in on the job. Also, I'm assuming that all this was done in Arabic. Since the original was in a defective script, how would subsequent dotting have affected it? Also the known variants, supposedly due to dialects - would they have affected it?

LOL - yes, most Muslims say Rashad Khalifa was a heretic. Rashad, on the other hand, spent a good deal of his writing "proving" that Muhammad never claimed to be the final Messenger of God (which took a lot of mental gymnastics and quibbling over grammar).

Also, the diacritics, as well as the additions of the Alefs and other such letters, certainly affected it - but the ones who believe in this claim say that "all of this was guided by God's hand, because the Quran we have now has the code in it." Supposedly, all of the editing and everything also was "guided by God's hand." They have no explanation as to why different versions of the Quran existed up until it was collected, and many other contradictions, but that's not even the main issue:

The main thing is that, the way that the "code" exists now, it can literally be reproduced in ANY text with verse numbers. The verse numbers are required - but beyond that, it could be any random text. This is why I was able to find a similar code in the Book of Mormon. The only thing unique in the Quran are the counts of the "mysterious initials" - but as I demonstrate in my book (the details are far too long for a post, which is why it is in a book LOL) these counts have been deliberately faked and misrepresented.

This video, while on a slightly different topic, is absolutely right when it claims that we can find this kind of numerological nonsense in any written book with numbered lines (which is why I said that we needed the verse numbers). So, yes, the Mathematical Miracle is just nonsense... I just get sad when I know some people will be duped by this. I'm also sad that I was duped by this, myself, when I was younger (yes - I am technically an "apostate from Islam," myself).

"And the earth, how it was laid out flat?, and thus infer from this the power of God, exalted be He, and His Oneness? The commencing with the [mention of] camels is because they are closer in contact with it [the earth] than any other [animal]. As for His words sutihat, ‘laid out flat’, this on a literal reading suggests that the earth is flat, which is the opinion of most of the scholars of the [revealed] Law, and not a sphere as astronomers (ahl al-hay’a) have it, even if this [latter] does not contradict any of the pillars of the Law"

Any book said to come from a divine being which contains such a glaring error such as this is most definitely a fake, no matter how many alleged “mathematical miracles “it contains.

One error is one too many from an alleged deity, who should know his creation better than this.

The Quran is a book of deception, and according to the God of the Bible, who it claims to represent, the master of deception is Satan, whose aim is to mislead mankind away from the truth.

Sam, my mate, numerology is the attempt to find patterns or meanings in random numbers, which by definition have no patterns.

This month, the tenth in our year, has 5 Saturdays. Five times 10 is 50,, and if you add to that the numbers of days this month, your get the year I moved to London!!! What a MIRACLE!!!

Or...

And if you add the number of Saturdays this month to the number of eyes I have, I get the number of cups of tea I drank today...

It is a MIRACLE!!!!!!

Or...

I made a potato salad yesterday, using 9 potatoes 5 eggs 1 beetroot and 4 pickled gherkins. That is a a total of 19 items. As you believe that 19 is a holy number, being the number of angels guarding the Qur'an from alteration, does that mean my salad is also holy?

Can you really not see how it done? People see numbers of count something. They they use their imagination to suggest meaning to what they found. If they cannot find any meaning, not not the one the were looking for, they look for new numbers or count something else.

When they finally concoct a story from some random number facts, they shout "miracle".

Well, Manfred, we can't be sure whether your salad is holy because we don't know whether you started cracking your eggs at the Big End or the Little End. Big-endian or Little-endian though, it sounds delicious. I just need some beetroot and I'll have a go, if you don't mind. I'd better start some eggs one way, some the other, to be on the safe side.

‘Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

manfred wrote:Sam, my mate, numerology is the attempt to find patterns or meanings in random numbers, which by definition have no patterns.

You know nothing about numerology pattern according to the calculations in the verses of the Quran starting from the Arabic alphabet which contains or consists of 28 letters.

I am waiting for an answer from an expert-mathematician MattS.

Well then SAM, what's it to be?1:

St. Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354–430) wrote "Numbers are the Universal language offered by the deity to humans as confirmation of the truth." Similar to Pythagoras, he too believed that everything had numerical relationships and it was up to the mind to seek and investigate the secrets of these relationships or have them revealed by divine grace. See Numerology and the Church Fathers for early Christian beliefs on the subject.

A Christian tradition, taken up by Muslims? Or 2:

It is also the study of the numerical value of the letters in words, names and ideas. It is often associated with the paranormal, alongside astrology and similar divinatory arts.[2]

‘Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.’ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

manfred wrote:Sam, my mate, numerology is the attempt to find patterns or meanings in random numbers, which by definition have no patterns.

You know nothing about numerology pattern according to the calculations in the verses of the Quran starting from the Arabic alphabet which contains or consists of 28 letters.

I am waiting for an answer from an expert-mathematician MattS.

Sam,

I am not quite sure I understand your question, but let me just say that I do understand the counts of the Arabic letters used in Rashad Khalifa's numerology very well - I spent years verifying every letter, and every claim made. I am well aware of the arguments, and their flaws. The entire counterargument is much too long to go into in a forum post - and this is why I published a book on this very thing - so naturally I cannot cover everything, but here are a few problems with the so-called "miraculous letters:"

1) The verses that are initialed are translated in a deceptive way. For example, we have the below:

However, there is no indication in the Arabic grammar that this verse at all refers to the letters. In fact, notice how Dr. Khalifa had to insert parentheses to explain what his interpretation was? Nearly every Muslim scholar in the world (who know Arabic much better than I) agree that the statements after the letters refer to the verses of the Quran itself, because it is the Quran that was Muhammad's miracle.

2) The way each letter is counted is arbitrary. For example, Arabic does not allow certain double letter combinations - such as two Alefs or two Yas in succession. To take the place of this double letter, a Hamza is inserted.

When counting the letters, the Submitters count every Alef with a Hamza as a double Alef to reach their counts. They say "this is the rule in Arabic - this is a double Alef."

However, when counting Yas with a Hamza, they count this as a single Ya (see, for example, verse 36:18, which has a double Ya but is only counted as a single Ya in official counts). They say "this is because the other letter is a Hamza, so even though it is technically a double Ya, we only need to count it once!"

Can you see how silly this is? Some might even go so far as to say deceptive?

As another example of arbitrary counting, to reach a multiple of 19, you must sum up the counts of every Ha and Mim in the chapters initialed with these letters AND exclude every other chapter that contains Ha and Mim in their groups, even though there is a common letter. However, in order to reach a multiple of 19 with the initial Saad (on chapter 38), we must combine this with all of the other counts from chapters containing Saad in their initial group (even though none of these initial groups match, they just share one common letter). This is not a consistent method of counting, and destroys any statistical significance found. Unless EVERY chapter is counted the same exact way, there is no claim that can be made. There is nothing logical or mathematical in changing your method of calculation in the middle of a calculation in order to reach a conclusion.

3) I wrote an entire, fake, holy text where I was easily able to replicate (and surpass) the letter counts (as well as every other claimed miracle related to this code). If it was so miraculous, how could a mere human imitate it?

4) This is probably the most important point: The letter counts, and the claims made about them, are manipulated.

Dr. Khalifa counted the letters wrong, plain and simple. The Submitters openly admit this, and as a result they had to perform a recount in 2002 due to many mistakes being made. They say that "there weren't THAT many errors" and that errors were only found with two letters. What they fail to mention is that the two letters that they found mistaken counts on are the two most common Quranic initials (Alef and Lam). They also fail to mention that to make something a multiple of nineteen, one needs to make a maximum of nine additions or subtractions, at most. This follows from complex number theory, but it is very easily verified: Pick ANY random, whole number and I guarantee you that you need to at most subtract or add nine to make it a multiple of 19.

What this meant for the Submitters was they had to compare multiple copies of the Quran, then pick-and-choose what letters they needed to add and subtract from a combination of different readings in order to "make the code work." This was not done in any scientific way (even though it was claimed that it was - their method was very flawed, and not at all scientific. Instead, they made the evidence fit their conclusion, instead of the other way around). They state that "we only had to make a couple of changes, so Dr. Khalifa's counts were ALMOST right..." but here's the thing: A "couple" of changes is very significant, when you consider at most nine needed to be made to "expose the miraculous code."

To show you an example of this deceptive manipulation, the Submitters stated that the Syrian reading of the Quran was the "least corrupted" that they could find (i.e., it conformed to the code the most), and so they made most of their selections from this reading. In verse 2:2, the Syrian reading had this word:

ذٰلِكَ

While the edition the Submitters used originally had an extra Alef in their spelling of the word:

ذَٲلِكَ

The Submitters decided to change their spelling. However, in verse 13:3, the Syrian Quran has رَوَٲسِىَ while the Submitters decided to stick with their original spelling of رَوٰسِىَ . Why? Because if they remained consistent in their changes, this would violate the expectation that the letters will appear in multiples of 19. This is NOT my claim, but this is taken directly from the "scientific standards" set by the Submitters while doing their recount / editing. It is said that this Miracle prevents the Quran from being tampered with because any change will immediately cause many multiples of 19 to disappear. Therefore, they specifically set out to alter the Quran to cause the MOST multiples of 19 to appear, under the guise of preserving the original text... however, this is, as I said above, modifying the evidence to fit a conclusion - in other words, this is termed "fraud."

I hope this helped clarify my points. I know that it is difficult to have your beliefs questioned, and can be even harder to accept that you might have been deceived, but I ask you to please examine the facts. The so-called "miraculous letter counts" are nothing more than smoke and mirrors.